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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25397953">Who Knows?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Femdom, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Instability, Unreliable Narrator, eventually</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:16:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,236</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25397953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He watched them leave from the roof sometimes. But he never followed. Following meant certain punishment, and Basil had seen from the men who had been at the temple longer than he what too much punishment could lead to. It used to scare Basil, the idea of becoming so accustomed to punishment that one could not survive without it. To become dependent on your oppressor so wholly and without recourse.</p><p>It still scared Basil.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Who Knows?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>                Basil didn’t know</p><p>                He had never much cared for his homeland. Truth be told, he hated it, that village called “Moat”. His father always told him it was a land “deeply connected to its roots” but Basil knew that was nothing but a lie he told himself. Basil suspected his father knew too, something in his eyes would always undermine the words he spoke.</p><p>He didn’t blame father. Basil, too, once felt the need to tell himself such things. When his entire world was his village by the shore, and the time could be told by the passing of the mussel-boats into port.</p><p>Basil liked the boats. He liked to watch, as they floated on the water in a way he could never dream to. And he liked to watch as the women who crewed the vessels would heave on their oars as they drifted out towards the edge of the world. Basil was told by a passing fur peddler that although there was more earth beyond the edge to the west of his village, to the east lay only more water.</p><p>He knew not to drink the water, lest he succumb to the salt-poisoning that came as a result. A different peddler, a woman with grey eyes, had told him that.</p><p>Still, Basil had always wished that he could accompany those women on one of their voyages. He had seen their boats get smaller and smaller until he could no longer make the shape of their craft out against the horizon so many times that he could envision it perfectly. Yet try as he might, he could not imagine what it must be like beyond that point.</p><p>Surely, there must be some end to the water. Some other edge of the mighty earthen bowl in which the water rested. Otherwise, Basil reasoned, there was nothing to stop the water from spilling out the other side, like a tipped flagon, or a washtub on its’ side. But then, if the Earth really was a massive bowl, full of undrinkable water, then it would follow that the bowl’s edges must be connected.  The water has to be held in on all sides, after all.</p><p>Basil knew that Siendra would never allow him to go on the boats. She was very strict. Men were not to leave the property, for their own safety. The women of the temple could come and go as they pleased: and did so regularly.</p><p>He watched them leave from the roof sometimes. But he never followed. Following meant certain punishment, and Basil had seen from the men who had been at the temple longer than he what too much punishment could lead to. It used to scare Basil, the idea of becoming so accustomed to punishment that one could not survive without it. To become dependent on your oppressor so wholly and without recourse.</p><p>It still scared Basil.</p><p>So Basil never left the temple. Until, that is, Basil met the man from Mercia, whose hair was cut short, much shorter than his own, and who carried a blade at his side. Basil had never seen a man with a blade before, had never known a man who would dare to flaunt such a prominent instrument of insubordination, and around women no less!</p><p>Basil was enchanted by the man, and his blade. He had told Basil that he was a traveler, from a land very far from Moat, where men were allowed to do all the things women did, and the women of the land embraced this way of life!</p><p>The man told him that this land was called Enmire, and it laid across the water, past the edge of the world. Basil immediately felt drawn to that place, where he could wear a blade at his hip and even learn to use it, and the women of the region would find no reason to stop him.</p><p>After listening to the yarns spun by the traveler until the moon had replaced the sun, and the stars had come out to watch him, Basil resolved to go to this land called Enmire, and asked the traveler to help him get there.</p><p>“Hoho!” The traveler laughed, a great bellow of a sound rising from deep in his chest. “While I’m sure you would be welcomed, the path to Enmire is not so simple or safe to be traveled by a young man!”</p><p>Basil pointed out that the traveler was also a young man, and he seemed to have made the trip just fine.</p><p>At this, the traveler let out another laugh, and said: “Aye, but I know what’s what! I can tell my up from my down, and my left from my right! And I’ve a great deal experience with the instrument here at my side,” he motioned to his blade, resting still at his side in a worn leather scabbard, “and I have found myself to be an excellent maestro with it,”</p><p>Basil scratched his head, and told the man that he wasn’t quite sure what he had just said made much sense, but Basil still didn’t see why he couldn’t make the journey if the man in front of him had done so. Basil reckoned that, even if he could find a blade similar to the one his conversation partner carried, he wouldn’t know how to use it, and so it wouldn’t be of much use to him.</p><p>                The traveler grew increasingly uncomfortable as Basil’s line of questioning continued, as the young man asked so many questions his head felt as if it were filled with cotton, and he suddenly realized that he did not particularly enjoy the company of this young man from Moat, and decided to get as far away from him as possible as quickly as he could. He began to voice his exit.</p><p>“I’m very sorry, Parsley, but-“</p><p>“Basil.” The words were out of Basil’s mouth in an instant.</p><p>“Right, Basil. I’m very sorry, Basil, but I’ve just remembered that I’ve left my horse unattended, and I must go retrieve him before some fellows of an unsavory sort decide that they’d rather my horse be <em>their</em> horse.” The traveler was very proud of his excuse, believing it to be quite well crafted, and was satisfied that he held such skill in thinking quickly on his feet.</p><p>                Basil thought what the man was saying was odd, and most assuredly a lie, but merely watched as the traveler touched his palm to the hilt of his sword, turned around, and briskly walked out from the temple yard. While Basil was sad to see his new friend go, he was excited at the prospect of leaving his little village by the shore, that village called Moat, and traveling by land or sea to that new, exciting land called Enmire.</p><p>                But, if he left the temple, then he would most assuredly be due for a punishment when he returned. Most likely, a particularly nasty one.</p><p>                But what if he never returned? What if Basil left the temple for Enmire, and when he got there, he simply stayed? Basil had never considered leaving the temple as a permanent option before. After all, in Moat, men were not allowed to be out after dark. He would surely be punished if he was caught within the limits of the town by a policewoman.</p><p>                If Basil left and never returned, though, Siendra would be unable to punish him. And if he made it outside the town before nightfall, then the policewomen would not punish him, nor would they take him back to town.</p><p>                <em>Well, if I cannot be found after sunset, everything will be alright so long as I’m out of town by nightfall</em>, Basil supposed. He would just have to leave early then! Having decided this, Basil returned to his bunk, gathered all his belongings and threw them into a sack, and watched the other men in the quarters sleep, as he waited for dawn.</p><p>                The men of the temple numbered four and two tens. Their slumbering forms organized into rows of bunks on the floor of the sleeping quarter, moonlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows that lined the room.</p><p>                They looked peaceful, and happy, sleeping soundly after a day’s work cleaning and cooking and maintaining the temple’s facilities. Their collars spelled out their names, as well as serving as a quick and easy way to identify them as male. Basil didn’t know why they had to wear collars, but the women didn’t.</p><p>                Or didn’t he?</p><p>                The women put the collars there. That was why they didn’t have to wear them. They created the collars: forged their metal. It was they who soaked and cured the leather which bound their necks and-</p><p>
  <em>                Ah. </em>
</p><p>There he was going again. Thinking those uncouth thoughts. Siendra would give a dozen lashes for such thinking. Basil was smarter than that. Basil knew that <em>good boys</em> did not question their betters. Basil knew that he was a <em>good boy</em>, and that consequently he would not think such offensive things about the women who cared so deeply for him.</p><p>                The women of the temple had always treated him well. Had fed and clothed him when his parents left, and raised him for so many years, into the strong adult man he now was. And now Basil had the <em>audacity </em>and was so <em>ungrateful</em> that he had taken to criticizing their choices in his mind.</p><p>                They needed the collars. <em>He </em>needed the collar. Because the collar grounded him, and reminded him that he was not his own, but belonged to another.</p><p>                Basil found himself subject to a splitting headache, sitting there on that bed. He did not know what to think, he did not know who he was. Where he was. Basil couldn’t think. He gripped his head in the palms of his hands and stared into his fingers.</p><p>                The darkness within his hands was comforting because it was familiar, and it was his own. Basil realized how erratic his own breathing was, and made to slow it. It would not do to act like such a weak fool, after all. Siendra and the others would not accept a man who was so unstable that he could not go to sleep like the <em>good boys</em> around him. Another shooting pain, this time in the back of his head, as the two conflicting sides within his mind fought without pause.</p><p>                He could feel it, the fighting. He could feel it in his head, and it hurt.</p><p>                Basil let loose a cry, the pathetic whimper loosing from his lips like blood from a wound as he found his fingers covered in salty tears, and his lower lip bleeding from the pressure of his own teeth.</p><p>                What were they doing to him? What <em>had</em> they done to him? Were they turning him into something he was not? What was he?</p><p>                Basil didn’t know.</p><p>                He remembered his father saying that the most important thing to maintain was one’s integrity. Whether one was a man or a woman, it was important to have a sense of self, and pride in that self. Like how his father was proud of him for learning his letters. Or how Siendra was proud of him for saying the correct responses. But was she proud of him? Or proud of the other Basil, the one in the same body, but whose thoughts were not his own?</p><p>                Basil didn’t know.</p><p>                He suppressed a hiccup and clawed at his left arm, suddenly aware of a burning itching there. He split his fingers apart ever so slightly, the tears obscuring and burning in his eyes, and looked upon his left arm to see a symbol there, burned into his flesh for as long as he could remember. A wagon with two shepherd's hooks over it: the crest of the temple. The brand marked him as an asset of the temple. He was forever indebted to the women who oversaw it, and he could never leave.</p><p>                The brand looked the same as it always did, the skin having long since healed. But the burning feeling just beneath the skin was still there, wouldn’t go <em>away</em>. Basil thought it might be worse than the pain in his head, but he somehow knew that the pain on his arm <em>was</em> the pain in his head.</p><p>                It was in his head. All of it. It had to be. Because of what they were doing. Because of what they <em>had done</em>. Because they were taking Basil and improving him: crafting him with care and expertise into something else, something befitting the station of a male in the village of Moat and he <em>knew</em>- Gods he <em>knew</em>!</p><p>                Basil remembered! For a fleeting, flashing second Basil remembered it all. Basil knew who he was. Basil knew where he was. Basil knew why he was here, remembered the woman who had brought him here, the woman who had put the collar round his neck and fastened it <em>tight!</em> And then, as the final beams of moonlight faded into obscurity against the cold, hard temple walls, Basil looked and saw the blood pooled at his feet, dripping from his lip. He knew it was his. Saw the sack full of socks and corn-husk dolls and drawings of princesses saving princes. He Knew! He saw his father, his home, and the sickly green eyes of that <em>fucking </em>woman and then, just like always,</p><p>                Basil didn’t know.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>More to come.<br/>Grammatical errors will hopefully be eliminated soon.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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